Cartels use US guns in Mexico

AlArabiya English

The guns cartels are using in Mexico have been illicitly trafficked from the US, John Sandweg, former ICE Director, tells Al Arabiya News.  #US #Mexico

Transcript

00:00Historically, most of the U.S.'s focus has been on illegal traffic going north into the

00:04United States.

00:05And people might be surprised, we typically and historically have done very little enforcement

00:11on southbound traffic.

00:12So people going into Mexico rarely encounter U.S. officials who screen them or document

00:19their departure or search for the illicit flow of guns.

00:21Typically, Tom, what happens here are guns go south and cash goes south, drugs and people

00:27go north.

00:28So I think Mexico, this has long been a frustration for them.

00:35A lot of the guns that cartels utilize and a lot of the guns in Mexico are illicitly

00:38trafficked from the United States.

00:40The challenge for the U.S., of course, has been with the chaos we saw at the border over

00:45the last eight years, we just had huge numbers of people crossing.

00:49It really pulls the resources from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that would

00:53be in charge of outbound enforcement from deploying those troops that we needed to put

00:57those Border Patrol agents working in the interior and those CBP officers handling

01:02the influx of people coming across the border.

01:05So I think that was a significant concession to the extent that the U.S. steps up on that

01:09and one that frankly really will help kind of dismantle those cartels, as I was saying,

01:13in terms of depriving them of some of the cash that they're trying to repatriate and

01:17depriving them of the firearms that they smuggle from the United States.

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